The dispensing of individual sheets from a continuous web of such sheets presents a multitude of problems, depending on the rigidity or limpness of the material of the web, the importance of any accumulated error in the successive lines of severance and the intrinsic valve of the individual sheets themselves.
Lottery tickets are even more valuable potentially than for example railroad or theatre tickets, postage stamps, paper toweling or the like and must be carefully severed exactly on the lines of perforation while being carefully protected from unauthorized access, vandalization or fraudulent marking.
In U.S. Pat. No. 3,612,372 to Richer of Oct. 12, 1971 and U.S. Pat. No. 3,734,261 to Richer of May 22, 1973, the automatic ticket dispensers include either a stationary tear bar for enabling the customer to tear off his ticket or an upward moving blade for cutting off each successive ticket. However, registration and accurate severance are obtained by the use of registration holes in the fan-folded continuous web and registration pin chains for advancing the web.
In U.S. Pat. No. 3,894,669 to Wescoat of July 15, 1975, an automatic ticket dispenser is disclosed in which registration holes and pins are eliminated. The web is advanced by the nip of a knurled lower roll and a friction ring upper roll, there being a pair of ticket bowing rings on the upper roll which bow the tickets down into slots in a stationary bed plate. The bowed end most ticket thus is rigidified, as it spans the gap to a stop means, so that a down moving blunt breaker bar can deliver a karate blow at the line of perforation to separate the ticket.
The above mentioned dispensers of the prior art have been found to be most satisfactory for use with ticket material of relatively high cost, such material having an inherent ability to span a gap in self-supporting horizontal position and to present enough resistance to a down moving bar to cleanly break at the perforated line of connection. It will be understood that if there are no registration pins and holes, and if a ticket is broken off elsewhere than at the exact line of perforation, a friction feed may accumulate the error and may cause all succeeding tickets to be inaccurately separated from the web. Thus some lottery customer might pay for his ticket and obtain only a half ticket or a mutilated ticket and thereby lose his right to claim the million dollar, or other, prize.